Red Beard (nuclear Weapon) - Service

Service

RAF stocks of Red Beard for the Canberra and V-bomber forces totalled 110. Of these, 48 were stockpiled in Cyprus to meet the UK's commitments to CENTO, 48 were stockpiled in Singapore (RAF Tengah) to meet commitments to SEATO, and the remainder were located in the UK. Royal Navy stocks are believed, from archived declassified documents, to total 35 weapons to be shared between five aircraft carriers and shore-based supply and overhaul infrastructure. The carriers were thought (from similar sources) to each have an air-conditioned storage capacity for five Red Beard weapons.

Before the Red Beard codename was issued in 1952, it was frequently referred to in official documents as the "Javelin Bomb", because it was originally conceived as a weapon for the "thin-wing Javelin bomber", a projected derivative of the (thick wing) Gloster Javelin all-weather fighter. The designation "Target Marker Bomb" was a euphemism used to disguise the nature of the bomb, so that its dimensions and weights etc. could be circulated to aircraft and aircraft equipment designers without compromising security.

It was replaced by the WE.177 in the early 1970s.